


with a little help from my friends (the graveyard shift remix)

by Ahavaa



Series: see you on monday [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, hollywood style depiction of grief, just general fucking sadness all around, karen page is a reporter, less than healthy coping mechanisms, the mcu is a terrifying place to live, wallowing in the sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4080502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahavaa/pseuds/Ahavaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy Nelson and Karen Page are very different people.  </p><p>Foggy was a swimmer; he could get through deep water without drowning.     </p><p>Karen didn't know how to swim, but she could run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with a little help from my friends (the graveyard shift remix)

Foggy asked her about it, once. If it was easier because she'd _fucked_ Matt. 

He wasn't trying to - he didn't mean anything by it, Karen knew, and he didn't say it like that, but it was one of her tender spots. 

How do you say "yes, Foggy, actually, it made it much easier, even though I felt like I was going to drown in it, because I loved him. The Avengers didn't wind up sending their less flashy members to stalk _you_ , because you because you were just his friend, but somehow they figured that Matt and I fucked so when it was clear that he was really, really gone, I got a fruit basket and a call from Virginia fucking Potts telling me that if there was anything she could _do_ I should give her a call. Yeah, it was easier, I got leverage out of it. For a couple weeks I had whichever Avenger had insomnia hovering outside my block because they thought whoever killed Matt was going to kill his _girlfriend_ too."

There was no way. 

She didn't remember what she said. She knew that she hadn't wanted to be alone with him for a few weeks, after that conversation, because - because it made her feel ugly, and spiteful, and luckier than him. 

 

**

 

She knew the difference between "raccoons on the roof" and "a grown man trying to sound like raccoons on the roof," after all this time, so she'd finally opened the window and said "come in, it's cold." Not because she particularly wanted _company_. Certainly not Avenger company. When Foggy said "if Iron Man can get a miracle, why can't Matt?" he meant that they both should get a miracle, but when Karen said it, she meant "if one of them gets to be alive, it should be Matt, and if I knew how to make it happen, I would." They were useful, though, and even though she was exhausted and miserable, she thought that if she could just keep _doing things_ she might make it out of this grey fog she seemed to be living in. They could help. They would help, whether they wanted to or not: she was pretty and she was smart, and she was willing to bet she could get what she wanted. 

"Most people don't notice," the man - oh, bow, arrow, Hawkeye. Right. Hawkeye. 

Karen shrugged. "You're not the first person walking around on my roof." Nodded towards the fresh cup of coffee she'd put on the end table. "I don't know how you take it," she said. 

"Hot," he said, and sat down on the floor, across the little IKEA coffee table from her. 

"You're in the way," she said. 

"Are you really watching infomercials?"

"No," Karen said, patiently. "I'm in my period underwear and college PJs staring at the TV at three am because I can't sleep because someone I loved died and now his sometimes-work-colleagues keep stomping around on my roof without permission because they invaded our privacy enough to know that we dated."

"Yeah," he said. "That sounds about right. Are you actually - I have chocolate." 

"I am a little drunk," Karen said. "Go away." And then she thought about it a little more, and said: "No, but give me the chocolate." 

(She figured that she'd only get his attention if she looked angry, and feisty: he seemed that type. If he'd actually gone away, she probably would've needed to start crying, but - no, she was right, it had been a guess, but it had been a good guess.) 

"So who did it," she said. They'd split the chocolate: he'd pulled it out of somewhere on his uniform, and even though it had been a cold night it had been a little squishy, but that was fine. 

"We don't know," he said. 

"Just say "I'm not telling you, Karen." She smiled at him. "Just say "nope, classified." We'll get along better."

"It's not some conspiracy," he said, and he looked - tired, and hurt, the way she felt on the inside all the time now. His nose was broken, too: somebody had taped it up for him. "There's some stuff even the Avengers don't know." He dropped back onto the couch, turned his head to watch her lips. "Don't tell anyone."

"Fine," Karen said. Maybe fine. Maybe not fine. She didn't think he was lying but _one of them_ had to know who killed Matt. 

"I get it," he told her, and put his hands up defensively. "I mean. Not get-it get-it, but. You want to wrap it up. Sometimes you just can't, you gotta - don't let it make you crazy, right?" 

"You're not the boss of me," she said. 

It turned out that she fell asleep, because when she woke up in the morning he'd gotten her a blanket and rinsed out the coffee mugs in the sink. Which was how and why Karen decided to put Hawkeye on her "not especially an asshole" list (for reference: iron man yes an asshole, captain america surprisingly also yes an asshole, the Falcon not an asshole, Natasha Romanov terrifying war criminal, not an asshole.) 

**

 

"Do not psychoanalyze me," she told the Falcon. 

"For free? Absolutely not," he said, which was just surprising enough to make her laugh. Fuck. 

"Everyone can come inside and stop stomping on the roof," she'd said. "I told Hawkeye that too."

"Thanks," he said, and it looked like he meant it. "It's cold out, lately. I appreciate the hospitality." 

"I want to know who killed him," she said. "That's all, I'm not going to _do_ anything with it, I just -"

"Yeah, nobody's keeping secrets from you," he said. "We don't know any more than you do."

"You knew that we were dating." 

"He talked about you," the Falcon said. "He didn't talk about anybody in particular the last time we worked with him, and yeah, Stark went through everything digital he had in the last month, none of it was helpful, don't tell anyone that because we all know it's massively illegal." 

"Right," she said. "OK."

 

**

 

Foggy looked exhausted: they'd both been coming to work a tiny bit drunk or hungover, the last few weeks. If "work" had consisted of anyone but the two of them, now, it probably would've been a bigger deal. 

 

**

 

The Black Widow was in her apartment, making something that smelled amazing, when Karen got home. She might have shrieked a little bit. 

"Coffee," the Widow said, and when it came down to it, she was a woman a little younger than Karen, short red hair that hadn't been straightened or curled, that day, and instead of wearing the kind of expensive natural makeup that she favored on the news, she was apparently barefaced. She had a pimple or two, coming in near her nose. It was the best coffee Karen had ever had in her life, and this was the most glamorous human Avenger who'd come to bother her in her own house yet, and she was suspicious. 

"I'm Natasha," she said. "If you're drinking tonight I'm drinking too."

"Yeah," Karen said, "yeah, I think I am. Isn't this work for you?"

"No," Natasha said. "Clint's on the roof, I just persuaded him to stop letting you know he was there by walking over the bad shingles. This is my wake for Matt, because I'm selfish. You knew him too. Help me send him home tonight."

Karen felt the tears prickling, and she got angry about that, because being angry was easiest. "I don't want to do that with you," she said. 

"No," Natasha agreed. "You don't want to do it at all."

Karen didn't say anything, because only idiots said "fuck you though" to the Black Widow. 

"We don't know who killed him," she continued, "and because it's been weeks, we probably never will."

"You have a god with a magic hammer," Karen said. "You have Stark, which basically means all the money in the world." So don't tell me you don't know, don't tell me you can't figure it out, she thought but didn't say, because she'd read some of the stuff that had popped up on Wikileaks. 

"Yeah," Natasha said. She smiled, just a little, and it looked like it hurt. Her throat worked, quick and efficient, when she took the shot all in one smooth movement. "Funny, isn't it?" 

Natasha said something in Russian that Karen didn't ask her to translate, later that night. Maybe it was a prayer for Matt. Maybe praying would be good for him. Maybe he'd hear it, or feel it, or whatever dead people did with prayers. 

Karen didn't have anything that she could say. She had a candle that she lit in the church, but she still hadn't found any words to go along with it. Matt could've explained it to her. She hadn't bothered to ask while he was around, so now she didn't want to ask anyone else. Probably she was doing it wrong. 

Poor sad little candle. 

 

**

 

After a few weeks, they stopped hanging outside her apartment at night. 

She was supposed to call if she needed a favor, but - 

At first she hadn't said it because she didn't want to piss anyone off, and then, when it had become apparent that they didn't know anything or were dedicated to not telling her what they knew, she just hadn't said it because - what was the point, it was a cruel thing to think and a cruel thing to say and probably not even true, but. 

This hero shit got my best friend killed, she wanted to say, I don't want you people around, okay? 

 

**

 

Two years later, though, she wound up calling Virginia Potts. She got through. Probably made her some kind of superstar. 

"Global Solutions made a bid for the SI contracts in New York," she said. "I want you to turn them down, please." 

"This wasn't what I was expecting," Ms. Potts said. She sounded surprised - good. Karen was glad to surprise her. 

"No, probably not, but do it anyways."

"If you have a reason why we shouldn't -"

"I have a shitload of rumor and hearsay," Karen said, "and if I take it public I have an actionable libel suit on my hands," because hey, she could pick up some stuff, Foggy was good at explaining, she couldn't wait to see him when he finally got kids, "that's why this is a favor, from you, to me, then you never hear from me again."

She was pretty sure that Potts was going to politely tell her to fuck off, but she stayed quiet on the phone for a long time, and then she said: "We won't accept their bid," and Karen got angry and pleased, both at once. Global Solutions was Fisk's money. 

"Thank you," she said. 

 

**

 

Foggy took it on the chin, and he kept going. 

Karen didn't understand how he could put it away like that, all the time, but she loved him for it. He saw Matt disappear, quiet, and he kept going, working the tenancy cases and the workmen's comp cases and the custody cases slow and easy, one at a time, couldn't get him to stop loving people. He was good with his hands, and once they started taking the custody cases, really focusing on that,  
he made her teach him how to bake cookies. Kids, he'd explained, the kids needed to see lawyers being good people, right? And Karen had started printed pages from the ridiculous coloring books they had online. 

"I don't even remember how to do this," Karen said, through her giggles, because they'd settled in her place for the night and it had progressed from "teaching Foggy how to bake" to "a lot of wine, and also eating a lot of raw cookie dough." She fully expected to throw up in the morning, but that was okay. It was good to be with Foggy, to have him in her house. 

"We're inventing a new pastry," Foggy told her, solemnly, and drifted onto her tiny back patio to shake the flour out of his hair. "Oh. Man, I am _dizzy_ \- what did you put in this wine, Page?" 

"Strength of ten grandmothers," she said, and it hit her all of a sudden, they were older, it had been _five years_ \- 

"Whoah hey," he said. "Angry grandmothers, it looks like." (He looked, for a minute, like he would be okay talking about it. She wasn't. She didn't want to - to rehash the same shit, over and over, like hamsters on a wheel.) 

"No, it's - it's fine, just somebody walking on my grave," she said. "I think the missing ingredient is baking powder."

"Or soda?" he asked. "Baking powder, baking soda, people tell me they're very different but I don't know about that -"

It had been a long time since Karen had cried about _that_ , and she wanted to prove to herself that she and Foggy could be friends, that they could be normal friends who had fun nights without getting weepy-eyed, and it had been _five years_ , so she smiled and said "I think one's flammable and the other one's inflammable," and thank god the discussion rapidly turned into how stupid a language English was and whether you could flavor cookies with wine (answers: extremely stupid, and you technically could, but the resulting mess was not something that anyone would want to eat.) 

It was a good night. 

 

**

 

Here is the time she told an outright lie for Foggy. The first time, Brett called her, not Foggy, thank whatever god was up there. Fuck, she'd thank Thor, if it turned out he was responsible enough to make sure it went down this way. "Because it would make him crazy, if this is wrong," Brett said. "It might be wrong. But it might not be wrong." He sighed, long and hard, and said: "fuck, I shouldn't be telling you this."

"No, you should," she'd said. "When should I come down to the station?"

"Do not do that, do not do that at all, be at Josie's in half an hour." 

"Some guy's trying to cut a deal," Brett said. "You don't need to know the details, but he's -" He looked at her, narrow, like he was trying to see if she was strong enough to hear it. Karen automatically put on her Business Face, and then sighed and rubbed her face with both hands. Met his eyes. "Okay," Brett said, apparently satisfied, even though she was pretty sure she'd just fucked up her mascara. "He says he and some buddies were the ones who - who took out Daredevil. A few years back, now." And then: "No, no, don't - that's what I _meant_ , Page, Jesus -" 

"I'm fine," she said. She felt more than fine, she felt _electrified_ , she felt like she could run a marathon. "What do you need to know?"

"Everything I needed to know I just got," Brett said crossly, looking away for a minute. Fuck him, she wasn't going to compose herself, this was - this was what she had been waiting for, all these years. "I never would've asked while he was - I mean. I'm a _cop_ , I couldn't know that kind of thing for sure, but - fuck. Karen, Matt disappeared right about the time Daredevil...stopped working."

"Oh," she said. Instinct - old, old, habit - and instinct made her flinch, even though at this point it didn't matter, it didn't fucking matter, obviously. 

"Yeah, _oh_ ," he said. "This is why I didn't talk to Nelson." 

"Thank you," she said. She'd started shaking, just a little. It didn't matter anymore, it couldn't matter, so - "yeah," and it came out quiet, and she didn't meet his eyes, "yeah, Matt and Daredevil disappeared at about the same time."

"Jesus," he said again. "Oh, you poor motherfuckers."

"That's not important," she said. 

"No, it's just that Matt was a _lawyer_ , do you get how many cases he fucked up, if it had come out while he was - I'm sorry." 

"If it had come out while he was alive," Karen said, even. "Yeah. We know."

"I am _still pissed_ at _both of you_ , but that's for later," Brett said. "Look. Don't get too excited, don't - don't, I'm serious, Page, I gotta run a lineup by this guy now, see if he's lying or not."

"Tell me," she said. "Call me."

**

He did. 

"It's not him," he said. "He lied. I'm sorry, Karen." 

Rage hit her like - there weren't any metaphors, she couldn't think, she was suddenly _furious_. She wanted to hit something. No; be honest, Karen, she wanted to hit some _one_. Whoever had lied about _that_ , she wanted to see him hurt, she wanted to see him bleeding - "What? No, maybe - are you sure, maybe he was trying to - to cut a better deal -"

"No," Brett said, positively, and it was _not fair_ , and she was shaking, and she wasn't going to cry about a false alarm like this, but it was _unfair_ to - to - she wanted to hit whoever it was, whoever had tried _that particular lie_ , how dare they, how fucking obscene was that, to use Matt's death as a - a bargaining chip - "No, hey, don't - stay with me, hey, are you okay?"

"I'm still here," she said, and covered the speaker with a finger so she could sniff. 

"I shouldn't've gotten you involved," he said, and he sounded tired. "I'm sorry, Karen."

"No," she said, too fast, too loud, fuck it, this was important, "no, please, no, tell me, every time this happens, please tell me." 

So that was the lie, even though it wasn't a lie that you told out loud. She and Brett didn't tell Foggy about it. What was the point? It would half-kill him; it half-killed her. There was no need for it to hit both of them. 

(And she still remembered him asking her "was it worth it," and - Foggy thought that she'd had something of Matt that he hadn't, so this was how she'd pay for it: she'd be the one Brett called, she could do this.) 

Oh, Matt, she thought, miserable and exhausted: you son of a bitch, why couldn't you have stroked out in the office. You could have died properly, we could've been done with it: instead you left us with this mess.

**Author's Note:**

> ...yeah, literally everyone in the MCU is now popping up here. 
> 
> Foggy grieves. 
> 
> Karen wants to know _what happened_. This is probably why she winds up meeting so many interesting people.


End file.
